Ammonium Nitrate: Regulate It

Editorial

Ammonium Nitrate: Regulate It

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

Usually I am opposed to government regulations, as they restrict our lives and impose excessive costs on the economy. But defense against violence and terror is a legitimate activity for the governance of a people, and we face greater dangers now than ever before.

It is well known that ammonium nitrate can be used to make a bomb. This chemical is normally used as a nitrogen fertilizer, and is widely available. No permit is required to sell or buy it, and there is no register of buyers or sellers. Some 1.7 million tons of ammonium nitrate were sold last year in the USA, at about $200 per ton.

Plants use nitrogen from two molecules, ammonium nitrogen (NH4) and nitrate nitrogen (NO3). Ammonium nitrate has the molecule NH4NO3, half ammonium and half nitrate. The product is also known as nitric acid and ammonium salt.

Ammonium nitrate is hazardous. It is a strong oxidizer. Contact with other materials can cause an explosion. It is harmful if swallowed or inhaled or comes in contact with skin. It is itself not combustible, but the heat of a reaction with other substances can cause a fire. It is, however, stable when properly stored for farm fertilizer. When released to the soil, ammonium nitrate leaches into groundwater, where it biodegrades.

According to experts on the subject, simple contact with other materials, (such as reducing agents) will not cause ammonium nitrate to explode. Heat, pressure and usually some initiator such as a regulated explosive must also be present to detonate ammonium nitrate. The high density grade of ammonium nitrate used as fertilizer is also more difficult to detonate than industrial grade used in commercial blasting. The World Trade Center bombing used Urea nitrate, not ammonium nitrate.

Ammonium nitrate was first synthesized by Johann Glauber in 1659; he combined ammonium carbonate and nitric acid. The full power of the explosive was not discovered until the end of World War I. Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for inventing the ammonia synthesis process. Throughout the war, ammonia synthesis plants were built and used in Germany to supply the country with explosives.

The main ingredient used in the truck bomb that murdered 168 people and destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 was two tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The Irish Republican Army, Tamil Tigers and some Middle Eastern groups have also used the ammonium nitrate bomb.

Despite its use in terror and destruction, today in the USA one still does not need a license or even personal identification to buy ammonium nitrate. The National Academy of Sciences has recommended banning sales of packaged ammonium nitrate unless dealers required IDs from buyers and keep accurate records. It also suggested putting chemical markers in fertilizer to aid bomb-sensing equipment and licensing fertilizer dealers.

In my view, it would be a legitimate part of national defense against terror to adopt the NAS suggestion for all sales of the substance. Farmers have been opposed to restrictions that would create delays and add to costs. But registration and tagging need not hinder the farmer. The cost should be borne by the U.S. government as part of national defense. There need also not be any delays. The chemical can be required to be tagged before a sale, and the identity of the buyer and seller recorded. Farmers could register personal and business information ahead of time so that there would be no delays when an ID is presented.

It is possible for terrorists to manufacture ammonium nitrate, but anything we can do to make it more costly and difficult for its use would reduce the dangers. It seems to me that the cost of monitoring the use of ammonium nitrate is well worth the reduction in the risk of its use in terrorist attacks. Ammonium nitrate is one case in which sensible regulation is warranted.

Copyright 2001 by Fred E. Foldvary. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, which includes but is not limited to facsimile transmission, photocopying, recording, rekeying, or using any information storage or retrieval system, without giving full credit to Fred Foldvary and The Progress Report.What are your views? Share your opinion with your fellow readers at The Progress Report!

We are Hanno Beck, Lindy Davies, Fred Foldvary, Mike O'Mara, Jeff Smith, and assorted volunteers, all dedicated to bringing you the news and views that make a difference in our species struggle to win justice, prosperity, and eco-librium.

14 Responses to Ammonium Nitrate: Regulate It

ammonium nitrate is not related to nitric acid or urea nitrate. ammonium nitrate is a very poor explosive and is not dangerous without a high explosive to ignite it. they now put traceing agents in all ammonium nitrate anyway so its useless unless you dont care about getting caught.

This country has seen enough restrictions. They do not work, and most of the time the only people who get hurt by the restrictions are the people that are trying to be saved. If a terrorist is going to make a bomb, a restriction that requires an i.d. to buy fertilizer will not stop him/her from buying it. Find other ways of preventing terrorism in this country.

I am 15 years old. My Ag teacher is making a us do a current Ag issue. My group decided that we would do one on why Ammonium Nitrates are so dangerous. We also did it in if the govnorment put a ban on it would alot of people still use it if not what would they use. Will you email me what you opions are about this. Thank You very much Jennifer

Your article on regulating ammonium nitrate was interesting but VERY misleading. Ammonium nitrate is widely available, but only in small amounts. ACS grade ammonium nitrate costs more than $70 per KG. Garden centers and fertilizer stores do not sell straight ammonium nitrate. It is usually less than 30 percent pure, and very coarse. It must be purified to a percentage greater than 90, which is very difficult to do even on a small scale. Ammonium nitrate is not explosive! It must be ground up into very fine particles, then mixed with fuel oil. Assuming that you do manage to complete these steps, detonating is the hardest part. Ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil (ANFO) can only be detonated with a primary explsion and a large booster. A detonating cap MUST be used, and is very tightly regulated. So if you did manage to get the ammonium nitrate and mix it to get ANFO, lighting it with a match would NOT detanate it. The media has exaggerated the ease of ammonium nitrate bombs. It requires previous knowledge on bombmaking, a large wallet, and a lot of milatary grade explosives. Please research more on the subject. If you have any questions email me.
Chrisjck_t_ripper@hotmial.com

We should also regulate all sharp objects, things we can trip over, and things that bite. I am behind Fred Foldvary! I also heard that there may be PORN on the internet. We need to regulate that too!!!!
As a citizen of the US I think it is fine to create more government agencies, or further burden the existing agencies, with the regulation of any and all things that my fellow citizens fear may be used to harm them no matter how ridiculously small the threat may be.

You are correct that ammonia nitrate can be used for distructive purposes. Applying the same logic, should license use of hammers as
they have been used in the murder of many more individuals as the one time that ammonia
nitrate was used. Any one suggesting the
licenesing of hammer users and restricting their sale would be ridiculed out of the media. My fear as that too few see the knee
jerk reaction as you have afore mentioned as
logical without seeing it through. Virtually
anything that can burn can be used as a bomb.
LP gas is much easier to purchase, transport
and detonate that ammonia nitrate. It can
create at least as much damage as ammonia nitrate fertilzer and that is just one of many examples. Please use your position more
responsibly as you are respected. Your influence, applied improperly can do more harm than you realize. Thank you for reading
my opinon.

I’m opposed to regulating the sale of ammonium nitrate. Once registration is enacted (and the farmer will be paying additional fees one way or another – the govt. is going broke, btw) what’s to stop a terrorist from creating a legitimate identity for registration purposes. He then lies low for 6 months or a year, all the while accumulating a ton of ammonium nitrate per month until he creates the bomb and then explodes it. By the time the rescue services and govt. react, the terrorist will be on his way overseas.

How does registration prevent this? It doesn’t. The govt. will still have to rely on underground information, the type of which it had before Oklahoma City as well as the WTC tragedies. Registration will not prevent these tragedies and will only add more bureaucracy to the very people who resent any bureaucratic interference in the first place.

If you want licenses and prohibitions on virtually everything for safety’s sake, move to Australia, the great nanny state. Unfortunately, Australia has proven that these licenses and prohibitions control the law-abiding but not the criminal mind intent on damage.

I am in the fertilizer business. The A/N used in the OKC bombing was low density A/N bagged as a fertilizer, not high density. When the Joplin plant got long on low D, they resorted to bagging and sold it as 34-0-0 A/N fertilizer which it qualified under the state rules.

When there is a will, there is a way, and putting restrictions on the sale and purchases of ammonium nitrate will virtually create no obstacle for terrorists to obtain their materials. Whatever money proposed to be spent on regulating ammonium nitrate would almost certainly do more good if spent on tighter security around places of importance.

by the way, ammonium nitrate is exceptionally insensitive, nest to impossible to detonate. and there’s little chance of it setting fire to anything from mere contact or even generous heating.

Registering dangerous substances does not and has not stopped bad people from obtaining them. This country has been making it harder for honest people to buy guns, yet there is still easy access to weapons outside the law. Same would go for ammonium nitrate. Plus, if someone really wanted ammonium then they could create their own underground factory to carry out the Haber process.

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

a way to have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. Last summer’s expansive forest fires shed light on growing class resentment in the West. Old loggers and ranchers rankled at the new urgency to stamp out the blazes that threatened the recent Aspenesque settlers. The newcomers expected working class firemen to make protecting their expensive homes top priority. (Chr Sci Mntr, Spt 7) The tinder for this envy? Rich people moving in bid up the price of land, making it hard to afford by people on the margin. The fault really lies with our system of privatizing land value. If this rising value were collected by land dues and shared by rent dividends – the essence of geonomic policy – who’d complain? The more people move in, the higher the land value, and the fatter the dividend paid to residents. Then people on the margin might go out of their way to invite rich outsiders in.

an answer for Jonathan of the Green Party (Nov 7): “What does ‘share our surplus’ mean?”Our surplus is the values that society generates synergistically. It’s the money we spend on the nature we use: on land sites, natural resources, EM spectrum, ecosystem services (assimilating pollutants). It’s also the money we pay to holders of government-granted privileges like corporate charters. We could share it by paying for the nature we use and privileges we hold to the public treasury then getting back a fair share of the recovered revenue. Used to be, owners did owe rent (“own” and “owe” used to be one word). And presently, some lucky residents do get back periodic dividends: Alaska’s oil dividend and Aspen Colorado’s housing assistance. Doing that, instead of subsidizing bads while taxing goods, is the essence of geonomics.
Jonathan: “Is local currency what you mean?”
Editor: It’s not. Community currency is a good reform, but every good reform pushes up site values. That makes land an even more tempting object of speculation. Now, any good will eventually do bad by widening the income gap – until you share land values.

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat — or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off — a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

suitable for framing by Green Parties. When Greens began in Germany two decades ago, they defined themselves as neither left nor right but in front. Geonomics fits that description. The Green Parties have their Four Pillars; geonomists have four ways to apply them:

Ecological Wisdom. Want people to use the eco-system wisely? Charge them Rent and, to end corporate license, add surcharges. To minimize these costs, people will use less Earth.

Nonviolence. Want people to settle disputes nonviolently? Set a good example; don’t levy taxes, which rely on the threat of incarceration, to take people’s money. Try quid pro quo fees and dues.

Social Responsibility. Want people to be responsible for their actions? Don’t make basic choices for them by subsidizing services, addicting them to a caretaker state. Let people spend shares of social surplus.

Grassroots Democracy. Better have grassroots prosperity. Remember, political power follows economic. Pay people a Citizens Dividend; to keep it, they’ll show up at the polls, public hearings, and conventions.

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat – or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off – a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

an alternative to conventional land trusts. Just as it seems some functions should not be left to the market – private courts and cops invite corruption (while private mediation is fine) – just so some land should not be left in the market. That said, sacred sites do not make much of a model for treating the vast acreage of land that we need to use. So the usual trust model, which is anti-use and counter-market, can not apply where it’s needed most. Trust proponents worry about ownership and control – two very human ambitions – but they’re not central. Supposedly, we the people own millions acres – acres that private corporations treat as private fiefdoms – and conversely, the Nature Conservancy owns wilderness the public can some places use as parks. So, the issue is not who owns but who gets the rent – ideally, all of us.

the Great Green Tax Shift maxed out”
Economically, taxing pollution and depletion does reduce pollutants and extracts – and thus the tax base; plus such taxes are regressive, requiring a safety net. On the other hand, collecting site rent is progressive and generates a revenue surplus payable as a dividend to residents, which can serve as the safety net.
Environmentally, taxes on waste and extraction do not drive efficient use of land, as does getting site rent. Better settlement patterns do reduce extraction upstream and pollution downstream.
Politically, green fees have less impact if applied locally; local is where grassroots movements have more impact. Yet getting rent usually entails shifting the property tax (or charging user fees), the province of local jurisdictions; both mayors and city voters have been known to adopt a site-value tax.
Ethically, putting into practice “tax bads, not goods” skirts the issue of sharing Mother Earth which collecting rent confronts head on. Since nothing is fixed until it’s fixed right, ultimately, greens must lead humanity into geotopia where we all share the worth of Mother Earth.

a study of Earth’s economic worth, of the money we spend on the nature we use, trillions of dollars each year. We spend most to be with our own kind; land value follows population density. Besides nearness to downtowns, we also pay for proximity to good schools, lovely views, soil fertility, etc. These advantages, sellers did not create. So we pay the wrong people for land. Instead, we should pay our neighbors. They generate land’s value and deserve compensation for keeping off ours, as they’d pay us for keeping off theirs. It’s mutual compensation: we’d replace taxes with land dues – a bit like Hong Kong does – and replace subsidies with “rent” dividends to area residents – a bit like Alaska does with oil revenue. Both taxes and subsidies – however fair or not – are costly and distort the prices of the goods taxed and the services subsidized. By replacing them and letting prices become precise, we reveal the real costs of output, the real values of consumers. Then, just by following the bottom line, people can choose to conserve and prosper automatically. A community could start by shifting its property tax off buildings, onto land – a bit like a score of towns in Pennsylvania do; every place that has done it has benefited.

the policy that the earth’s natural patterns suggests. Use the eco-system’s self-regulating feedback loops as a model. What then needs changing? Basically, the flow of money spent to own or use Earth (both sites and resources) must visit each of us. Our agent, government, exists to collect this natural rent via fees and to disburse the collected revenue via dividends. Doing this, we could forgo taxes on homes and earnings and subsidies of either the needy or the greedy. For more, see our web site, our pamphlet of the title above, or any of our other lit pieces; ask for our literature list.

a scientific look at how we divvy up the work and the wealth, how some of us end up with too much or too little effort or reward. That’s partly due to Ricardo’s Law of Rent, showing how wasteful use of Earth cuts wages. And it’s partly due to how a society’s elite runs government around like water boys, dishing out subsidies and tax breaks. While geonomists look political reality right in the eye, without blinking, conventional economists flinch. When Paul Volcker, ex-chief of the Federal Reserve, moved on to a cushy professorship at Princeton cum book contract, the crush of deadlines bore down. So Volcker asked a junior associate to help with the book. The guy refused, explaining that giving serious consideration to policy would ruin his academic career. The ex-Fed chief couldn’t believe it and asked the department chair if truly that were the case. That head honcho pondered the question then replied no, not if he only does it once. And economics was AKA political economy!